VLeung

I came to this film because I'd just seen its musical remake, The French Line, a campy colour affair with Jane Russell, 'presented by' Howard Hughes. The French Line isn't unwatchable, although one may want to peep through one's fingers during the cowgirl dance number, but it is outstandingly dated in terms of male-female relations. Jane Russell's richest-girl-in-the-world is warned from the start that she will put men off with her rootin' tootin' tomboyish get-up & behaviour, but it's her money and power that will really convince them she's wearing the pants.

I am mad about Joel McCrea and I like Hopkins a lot. I wanted to see what the original was like. And of course, because it's the 30s there's no such issue. Men and women can be knockabout pals, Joel McCrea is enchanted when Hopkins thrashes him at billiards, they get drunk together, fall asleep smoochily together and the happy ending is wonderfully engineered: you relax your modern PC concerns even though the penultimate scene features McCrea picking her up (protesting wildly) and (off-camera) locking her in his car. It squeaked into cinemas pre-Hays, too, so the last couple of scenes in particular are pretty racy and very funny. The two leads play beautifully together and Fay Wray is always good.

I was six or seven when I watched this, but still have extraordinarily strong images from it stuck in my mind - girls trapped inside a stone dinosaur, for instance. A haunting, magical children's programme, I would love to see it now.

I wonder, since I have to fill more lines for my review to be accepted, if it was also the source of one of the most disturbing images from my childhood - a town meeting from which all the attendees emerged as faceless men with sacks instead of heads.

I wonder if anyone else remembers this series, and wish the BBC would treat some of its old children's series the way they do their Jane Austen back catalogue, and release them in DVD box sets.

Very entertaining, often funny, and incredibly

well acted. But entirely uncamp. There's

no knowing irony, no Clueless confidence

• when the kids insult each other,

their lines are as rubbish as

normal kids' witticisms. I thought

it was pretty great and reveled in

its lack of sophistication or typical 00s

bored-detachment. These kids are also

amazingly talented, and look refreshingly,

charmingly real.